Mail and other document distribution machines frequently have folding stages following bursters. In such machines, however, the folding stage is frequently separated from the bursting stage by a registration stage therebetween. That is, documents that are to be folded together are collected at the registration stage after they are burst (or otherwise cut). When a given group of documents is gathered at the registration stage they are then moved onwardly to the folder and the next group of documents issues from the burster.
In the apparatus about to be described, however, documents are first slit into two strips; placed on top of one another in a "shingled" or staggered manner; and, delivered to a burster which alternately bursts upper and lower documents from the superimposed strips. Immediately upon leaving the burster, however, the documents are delivered directly to a folding stage without going through a registration stage. Consequently, it is often not possible to separate the documents to be folded into separate groups. This, however, is not satisfactory where, for example, each group of documents is subsequently intended to be placed in a separate envelope for mailing to a given customer or the like. It is an object of this invention, therefore, to provide an improved means for separating previously burst and folded documents into desired groups.